Bytemark sold to Iomart. Now what?

2 min readAug 30, 2018

iomart the hosting megalith has absorbed my former employer — the formerly fiercely independent Bytemark Hosting.

What do we know so far?

On 24 August 2018, Bytemark was sold to iomart, as reported by The Register.

Bytemark’s co-founders wrote a company blog post assuring customers of no changes and that they’d remain there til March 2019.

£4.9m, including a payment to the co-founders who chose to leave early, in November 2018.

We don’t know.

Iomart say nothing will happen.

When iomart bought Melbourne Server hosting, customers complained of reduced customer service whilst the original staff was reduced to a skeleton crew. A few years later, the brand no longer exists and their proprietary platforms are being shut down.

I am fearful for Bytemark’s technology and culture.

All the directors and co-founders have left, despite their strong claims that nothing would change.

The team page on the Bytemark site has been removed.

Development on Bytemark’s proprietary cloud platforms and software now seems effectively on hold, and unsupported by the original team.

Things may start to break so take action now.

It depends on your needs and usage. Are you on a fixed contract? When do you renew? Now is time to find out.

If you’re using Bytemark’s open source Symbiosis platform, this can be installed on any server. Some developers are planning to take on development independently.